I Got Soul (but I'm Not a Soldier)
by BonitaBreezy
Summary: Marisol just wants to work her shift and get her paycheck. And then Hawkeye gets thrown through the front window of the restaurant she works at and everything goes to hell.


Marisol had been expecting a pretty boring day. She thought she'd go to classes and then head off to her waitressing job for a few hours and then go home and catch up on some homework. And that all went according to plan, until halfway through her shift an ear-shattering screeching noise came from the street outside, and then suddenly there were tons of alien things out in the street. They looked almost human shaped, but human they definitely were not. Her first thought was that they were the same thing that had attacked in May, but the more she looked, the more different they seemed.

As far as she could tell, there weren't any portals or flying whale-things in the sky, and these guys had bright blue armor, instead of the gray she remembered. It was only after one of the aliens turned to stare directly at her that she realized she was frozen in front of the large plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant, watching. As the alien started to walk towards the window, she suddenly remembered how to move, stumbling backwards and away, almost tripping over a table in her haste.

The restaurant hadn't been very full, so there were only about fifteen people there, including her coworkers, but they'd all found the farther point from the window and huddled together with the backs to the wall. Marisol quickly went over to join them, sliding into a place between a shaking costumer and her coworker Jenna.

"Are you all right?" she asked the shaking customer gently.

"I don't know," he answered. "I got caught up in the last invasion too. And I can't help but think 'why me?'."

"I wasn't here for the last one," she told him. "I'd gone upstate to see my parents and watched it all on the news. But it'll be all right. The Avengers will take care of it, just like they did last time."

"Yeah, I know," the guy admitted. "It's just…hard to actually make myself _know_, you know?"

"Yeah," Marisol admitted. "I know. My name's Marisol."

"Sean," he grunted back, staring at the floor. Marisol looked back at the window to see what the progress on the aliens was when the one who was standing closest suddenly jerked and collapsed backward. From where he was lying on the street, she could see and arrow protruding from its head.

"Hawkeye!" she said, hearing the relief that was evident in her voice. So maybe she hadn't been as confident as she'd been trying to pretend. "Hawkeye is here." Surely enough, another two of the aliens went down, one after another, and then there he was, in sight of the window. He was a whirl of motion, using his bow as a blunt weapon one second and then firing off an arrow the next. Marisol could see one of the customers had pulled out his phone and was recording the fight, and she wondered if it would be put on youtube or sold to the highest bidder.

As Hawkeye whirled around to hit the last remaining alien in the street, it grabbed him by the wrist and she saw his mouth jerk open, like he was yelling in pain, before the alien used his other hand to grab him by the throat and lift him off the street. His hand loosened around his bow and it dropped to the street while the other was trying to peel the alien's fingers from his neck. They watched in tense silence and Hawkeye kicked the alien with the soles of his boots in the stomach, a controlled, powerful kick, and it hardly flinched. Instead, it twitched its arm back, and then threw him right through the window of the restaurant.

Marisol hid her face from the spray of glass, and when she looked back up Hawkeye was lying on the ground amongst shattered glass and the remains of a table he'd hit on his way down, breathing hard and bleeding all over the place. She could actually see him gather his strength and force himself back to his feet, now weaponless except for the arrows in the quiver on his back. The alien came at him with a wicked-looking knife, which Marisol thought was kind of a strange weapon for an alien to have, but then dismissed it, because what the hell did she know about aliens?

Marisol didn't know the first thing about fighting, but she thought that Hawkeye was moving differently now than he had been before. Slower, and favoring his right side. She wondered exactly how hurt he was from his trip through the window, and how on Earth he'd managed to find the strength to get up and keep fighting. The guy was still taking a video with his phone, even though he'd shrunk back even farther with the rest of them when the fight had come inside.

She wasn't really sure what was happening, but she knew when Hawkeye made a mistake, because the alien shoved its knife right into his shoulder, and Hawkeye choked back a scream, stumbling back away from it and against the far wall, now unable to use one of his arms. The alien advanced on him, and Marisol wondered if it was going to kill him before a surge of adrenaline sparked. The alien had its back to her, so she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the first thing she could reach that seemed like it would make a decent weapon, which was a heavy bottle of brandy off the serving cart. She wanted to approach quietly and stealthily, but she didn't think she had that much time, because the alien was right up in Hawkeye's face and looked like it was about to take his head off. So she ran across the room as fast as she could and smashed the bottle over the thing's head.

Instead of slumping to the ground like she'd hoped, the thing let go of Hawkeye and turned its fierce yellow gaze on her. She felt her eyes widen and the blood drain from her face as it apparently decided it would much rather kill her first and advanced. She stumbled away, sliding on glass and tripping over debris, suddenly much less capable of moving smoothly like she had when it had been to save someone's life. She wondered if it would hurt, as the alien moved to grab her, but she didn't have to find out, because suddenly it was dead on the ground, a knife sticking straight out of the back of its head. The same knife, she realized, that it had left in Hawkeye's shoulder.

Now that the knife was gone, she could see where blood was flowing from the wound, even against the darkness of his uniform, and his face was going whiter by the second. She ran to him, lifting him from where he'd collapsed to the floor. Or at least, she tried to. Despite being pretty average-sized, height wise, he was very heavy.

"I need help!" she called to the rest of the people, still huddled in the corner. "We need to elevate the wound…I think. I'm pretty sure. But I can't lift him up on my own. And someone get me clean towels. As many as you can find, I don't know how many we'll need." She was amazed that she was able to bark out orders like this, because really she just wanted to curl up under the counter and hide. But a man was hurt, and she was pretty sure she could at least help a little bit, so she knew she couldn't hide like she wanted to. She had to at least try.

The other people just stared at her for a long moment, and she pressed her hands to Hawkeye's wound to try and stop the blood, before staring at them with wide eyes, begging them to help her. Finally, Sean, the guy who'd been shaking so hard in the beginning, got up and hurried over to her. She smiled gratefully at him and together they lifted Hawkeye up so he was leaning back against her chest so she could keep him from falling over again. While they'd worked on getting him up, her boss and another customer had gone back to grab her requested towels, and were now depositing them next to her. She folded one tight as she could and pressed it against his shoulder, the stark white cloth starting to go red almost immediately. She knew he was bleeding a lot, too much, and that there was only so much they could do.

"He needs a doctor," she told them. "He needs help or he's going to die. He's bleeding so much…you don't think it's an artery, do you?" Sean shrugged helplessly, but another waitress, Camille, shook her head.

"No, arteries bleed, like, they spray out blood. Along with the beating of the heart? I saw a video of it in health class. I think he'd be dead already, if it was an artery," she didn't sound completely sure of herself, but it wasn't like anyone could argue.

"Maybe you should try calling the other Avengers?" Jenna piped up. "I mean, he has that ear piece in, that must be what it's for." Sean tilted his head for her, and sure enough, he had a black piece of plastic in his ear. She exchanged a look with Sean, stomach roiling with nerves, before she decided there were more important things than being scared of talking to famous people. She grabbed the plastic and settled it in her own ear, and suddenly she could hear voices, teasing and reporting in and a particularly serious one requesting that the rest "cut the chatter".

"Um," she tried, but her voice didn't really come out, so she had to clear her throat and try again. "I need help," she said, and her voice sounded louder. And all the chatter stopped completely, all at once, and then the serious voice said.

"Who is this? How have you accessed this line?"

"Um. My name is Marisol. But I need help. Hawkeye's really hurt, and I don't know how much longer he's gonna be alive if someone doesn't come. I'm not a doctor and there aren't any doctors here, so I don't really know, but he's unconscious and his face is really pale and he's bleeding a lot." She quickly replaced the first rag with the next one, firming up the pressure she was putting on it.

"Cap?" the serious voice asked, and another responded, and Marisol realized it was _Captain America_ talking back. "Thor, Tony? Can either of you get away to collect Hawkeye?"

"Aye," another voice responded, sounding regal and strong and old as anything Marisol had ever heard. "Tell me where he is."

There was a long pause, and Marisol realized they were asking her. And then she realized that she could not remember the address of the restaurant for the life of her. "Oh god. I don't know, I can't think," she said, panicking.

"It's okay, we're tracing Hawkeye's signal now," the serious voice said again, and Marisol felt herself relax a bit. He sounded so calm and in control, it was almost impossible not to feel calmer just by hearing it. They relayed the address to Thor, and hardly a minute later, he was stepping through the broken window, larger than life, and heading towards them.

"Thank you for caring for my shieldbrother!" Thor boomed, lifting Hawkeye from her lap like he weighed nothing.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked, voice squeaky and eyes bright.

"Aye, he will be just fine," Thor assured her. "The valiant Hawk is much more stubborn than he appears, and he will pull through this wound."

"O-okay," she answered, and then awkwardly added, "Thanks."

Thor smiled at her and then swiftly left the restaurant the same way he'd come in, stepping right through the broken window and then launching off in to the sky. Marisol stared after him for a moment, and then began to giggle uncontrollably. How even was this her life?

LINE BREAK

Life returned to normal after that, except that Marisol decided to apply for the EMT program, because she had liked helping Hawkeye and now she knew that she could (mostly) keep her head during a crisis. Sean continued to come by the restaurant, and she'd agreed to go on a date with him. Her parents were horrified to hear that she'd been right in the middle of a war zone and wanted her to move back home immediately (she'd refused). But otherwise, she continued to go to school and go to work and do homework. Life went on, and she went on with it, looking up to watch every time Iron man zipped overhead or Spider-Man left a street thug hanging from a lamppost, but mostly settling back in to life as usual.

It was almost a month after the Hawkeye Incident, as she'd taken to calling it, when two men entered the restaurant together, standing close and intimate, like they'd been together forever and didn't even really notice they were doing it. She'd walked up to them with a smile, but her greeting died on her lips when she realized that the slightly taller of the two was Hawkeye.

"You're Hawkeye," she blurted, and he grinned.

"Clint Barton," he corrected. "And you're Marisol. You saved my life."

"No I didn't," she denied. "I just made sure a doctor could. I was about three seconds away from freaking out the whole time, I promise."

"If you hadn't helped him, there's a great chance he would have bled out before we even realized he was unaccounted for," the other man corrected, and Marisol realized he was the serious guy with the calm voice. "We just wanted to thank you."

"Well…I mean, he saved me too," she responded. "He killed that alien thing before it could kill me, so we're even."

"Except you saved me twice," Hawkeye countered. "The first time, was when you hit it over the head with the bottle. Which was very brave, but also extremely stupid. Don't do that again."

"It wasn't that big of a deal," she said, trying to be cool about it. She wasn't sure if she was succeeding.

"I thought it was kind of a big deal. This is Phil, my husband. He also thinks it's a big deal. And, if you could please get a table for seven, I've got a bunch of hungry Avengers outside waiting to tell you what a big deal it is. I'm going to warn you now, that Tony Stark is probably going to try to tip you more than you make in a month."

"Okay," she answered dazedly. "I'll just…table. Yeah, one second. Just…" she held her hands up in a 'stay there' gesture and hurried back in to the kitchen. She was going to serve the Avengers dinner.

Marisol thought there was a very good chance she was going to have a stroke before the night was over.


End file.
